Fox is in Talks For an X-FILES Mini-Series; Considering More 24 and PRISON BREAK

After yesterday’s bombshell that NBC had casted Chuck’s Zachary Levi in a leading role for their upcoming revival of Heroes, Fox realized it had to return fire in a major way so as not to be outdone by one of its competitors… so of course they used The X-Files to do it.

In a surprising twist on this year’s Winter TCA presentation, the home of 24 did confirm talks are currently underway for a mini-series continuation of the Chris Carter series. However that’s where the news ends as the network did not state how many episodes were being considered, who would be returning if the event-series did in fact take place or what left over stories it would tackle.

Given the last movie sequel from 2008 didn’t address the series’ hanging thread of the apocalypse taking place, it seems a mini-series revival would be a good place to finally wrap things up the way they should have been back in 2002. As of now, all we can do is speculate – but hey, at least we can listen to Gillian Anderson and Chris Hardwick get the #XFiles2015 hashtag started on the Nerdist podcast!

However, The X-Files isn’t all Fox is considering putting back in play as at the presentation it was also stated the network is thinking about more episodes of 24 and, believe it or not, Prison Break.

Concerning 24, it was made clear there’s nothing more than ideas being thrown around at the moment, one of which would see the series continue without Kiefer Sutherland’s famed Jack Bauer (which would coincide with the rumor of Yvonne Strahovski’s Kate Morgan being groomed to take over the leading role of the show should Sutherland depart). In addition, it would work plot wise as, at least for an initial run, Jack is currently locked up with the Russians as per the end of 24: Live Another Day made clear.

As for Prison Break, this one throws us. Not so much because it’s a bad show – it’s actually a great show – but because unlike The X-Files and 24, there are no hanging threads. Everything was wrapped up rather cleanly at the end of the series and then even more so in the direct-to-video one off, Prison Break: The Final Break… and then even more so again when the character of T-Bag was revived for a one-episode arc on A&E’s Breakout Kings. So while we’ll welcome more Prison Break, it does seem rather unnecessary.

Overall, a big news day for Fox and fans of their past slate of great TV… oh, and Gotham was renewed for Season Two as well. You’re welcome.

The X-Files Are Officially Re-OpeningFox orders a six-episode event series

After years of wondering whether The X-Files would come back in any form – TV, movies, sock puppet show featuring voice doubles for the cast – it looked good for a return to television earlier this year and has now been confirmed by Fox: the show and its characters will return to investigate more mysteries in a six-episode “event series” much along the lines of 24: Live Another Day.

Despite David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson and creator Chris Carter being spread to the winds on other projects, they’re all coming back for the new miniseries, the details of which are being kept in a locked drawer guarded by a suspicious type endlessly puffing on Morley cigarettes. So we don’t yet know if any of the other characters – Mitch Pileggi’s Walter Skinner, say, – or creative team will be back for duty. Especially since the writers who worked with Carter to create the original series have themselves gone on to chart their own telly and movie courses.

“I think of it as a 13-year commercial break,” Carter says in a statement put out by Fox. “The good news is the world has only gotten that much stranger, a perfect time to tell these six stories.” Production is now scheduled to kick off this summer.

For all his gruffness and intensity, we’re more used to thinking of Idris Elba as conflicted heroes or the morally right leading man. So the occasional chance to see him play a rogue is always welcome, and the idea of him going toe-to-toe with Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk and the rest of the USS Enterprise crew sounds like a lot of fun. Good news, then, that Elba is in early talks to appear in Star Trek 3.

According to Variety, it’s nowhere near a done deal yet, so for now this has to float among the flickering stars of rumour space. But if he does sign a contract, he’ll be in place to play the big bad in the latest cinematic outing of J.J. Abrams’ rebooted Trek timeline.

Abrams, of course, is a little busy delivering the latest instalment of another vaguely famous space adventure, so Fast & Furious veteran Justin Lin will be directing Kirk and co as they take on their latest challenge. After a false directing start and the script changing hands (the current draft is by Simon “Scotty” Pegg and Doug Jung), the cameras should be back on the bridge in June ready for a 2016 release just in time for Star Trek’s 50th broadcast anniversary.

Pegg and Pine are back alongside Zachary Quinto’s Spock, Zoe Saldana’s Uhura, Karl Urban’s Dr. McCoy, John Cho’s Sulu and Anton Yelchin’s Chekov. Elba is a busy man right now – he’s just signed on to appear in Harmony Korine’s new revenge thriller The Trap and has worked on Beasts Of No Nation, A Hundred Streets, Bastille Day and Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book, among other projects. He’s on screens now in The Gunman and will be back as Heimdall in Avengers: Age Of Ultron, out here on April 23.

And the award for Weirdest News of the Day goes to Colossal, a giant monster movie to be directed by Nacho Vigalondo (best known for helming Timecrimes and karaoking with Elijah Wood and the RZA). Anne Hathaway has just been cast in the film as Gloria, “an ordinary woman who, after losing her job and her fiancé, decides to leave her life in New York to move back to her hometown,” only to find that she shares a psychic link with — I shit you not — a kaiju destroying Tokyo. Vigalondo remarks, “Colossal is my most ambitious script so far, and probably also the most personal one. Having Anne and this terrific team around goes beyond my craziest expectations.” And ours, Nacho. And ours.

Listen: no one likes to talk about sexual violence. It’s a hard subject to tackle — and without the right, nuanced language and understanding of the power dynamics, ramifications, and subsequent damage at play, it is very easy to create a moment of insensitive torture porn rather than a character-building hardship that engages both the story and the person involved. Which is funny when one considers how much sexual violence — and rape in particular — has become a mainstay in dramatic television tension-building. But on Saturday night, Starz’s original series Outlander tackled not only rape, but male rape (a seriously under-discussed topic) and managed to take a revolutionary stance when it comes to depicting sexual violence: how it affects the person subjected to it.

The immediate fallout of the rape of Jamie Fraser by Black Jack Randall is evident and visceral. It’s hard to watch and traumatic — something that, by definition, polarizes the audience viewing it. And it should: because nothing about rape, regardless of its depictions, is easy. It’s not easy for the person experiencing so it shouldn’t be easy to watch, either. Which is when it gets tricky because, while there is definitely a need for stories like this to be told (this is real life. It happens), it must be fully served and done with a lot of different things kept in mind. (Something that’s pretty hard to do on network television with its strict standards and practices.)

What makes it such a hard subject to put on screen well is the fact that the full reality is complicated and different for everyone, but its biggest damage is done internally. If rape is to be featured on a series, it should be two things: non-gratuitous, and fully examined. Too often, rape is used on television to service an outside character or titillate and scandalize without any sort of look at the serious mental and emotional fallout of the victim. Which is exactly where Thrones sometimes missteps, which spurs these discourses we see online. When using the rape of a female character to spur a male character into action, to shock with no real reveal, or to excite an audience without even hinting that there are real mental ramifications on the person after the fact — like the Cersei/Jaime twist last season, or even more recently with the odd juxtaposition of scenes inGilly and Sam’s storyline last week — is an abridged take on something that ultimately shapes our understanding of the act. To have someone who was raped or nearly raped cut from a scene of emotional trauma to, say, having sex with another person with no feeling about the event that just went down? In the words of Pete Campbell? Not great, Bob.

Which is why we commend when it’s done well and the reality (at times brutal as it sometimes is) services the characters’ evolution on all ends. Like these last two episodes of Outlander. Rape is treated with the seriousness it deserves. Even times where it is subverted, the gravity of the situation is never belittled or eschewed. When Outlander subjects its male lead to graphic, horrific rape, it’s not simply to shock anyone (we all saw this coming), or titillate the audience (there’s nothing sexy about this — regardless of your feelings about Tobias Menzies’ and/or Sem Heughan’s faces), it’s done to honor just how truly horrific and life-changing this event was for Jamie. It showed the true nature and evil of Randall. The show’s creator, Ron Moore, has said as much in interviews: we will see more of how this has affected him. Jamie will not just go back to being the Jamie he was before, because there is a heck of a lot of mental machinations that are now going to come into play. PTSD is real.

Thankfully, we’re not alone in our desire for sexual violence to be handled delicately. Last week, Hannibal showrunner Bryan Fuller discussed this very subject (particularly because — Hannibal spoilers ahoy — he’s dealing with Red Dragon in season three) with Entertainment Weekly and pinpointed the main issue with the prevalence of rape storylines on television. “There are frequent examples of exploiting rape as low-hanging fruit to have a canvas of upset for the audience,” Fuller said in the interview. “The reason the rape well is so frequently used is because it’s a horrible thing that is real and that it happens. But because it’s so overexploited, it becomes callous.”

He also added that rape storylines come “with a stable of tropes that are infrequently elevated dramatically, or emotionally. … And it’s frequently so thinly explored because you don’t have the real estate in 42 minutes to dig deep into what it is to be a victim of rape. … All of the structural elements of how we tell stories on crime procedurals narrow the bandwidth for the efficacy of exploring what it is to go through that experience.”

This. This is why the conversation of televised rape cannot be cast with a generic mold or opinion. This is why every time a rape that does not honor the victim and the violence they’ve endured (and how it will ultimately manifest itself mentally) becomes a major discussion on websites the world over. Each and every rape — and its depiction — is different, but until we handle them all with the same amount of respect, we have to dissect and discuss the merits of portraying these stories. Because it is, and sometimes should be, hard to watch: so shouldn’t we all want it to be done right?

Alex Rocco, best known for his role as Moe Greene in The Godfather, has died at age 79.

The actor, who lived in the Los Angeles area, passed away on Saturday. His daughter, Jennifer Rocco, confirmed his death on Facebook .

"Alex Rocco aka Alessandro Federico Petricone, Jr. passed away just hours ago on July 18, 2015," she wrote. "February 29, 1936 - July 18, 2015 RIP Dad, be with Mom and Marc....I will see you but not for a while...."

Alex is also survived by survived by his wife, actress Shannon Wilcox, son Lucien and a grandson, Variety reported.

Alex was born in Boston began his onscreen acting career in the '60s. He took acting classes taught by Star Trek star Leonard Nimoy, who died at age 83 this past February.

He appeared on shows such as the original Batman series and Get Smart before he starred in The Godfather in 1972.

In the film, he played a mobster and casino owner, who had lines such as "I got a business to run. I gotta kick asses sometimes to make it run right" and "Sonofabitch! Do you know who I am? I'm Moe Greene! I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders!"

He went onto appear on shows such as The Love Boat, Murder, She Wrote and The Facts of Life, in which he played Charlie Polniaczek.

In 1990, he won an Emmy for his role as a Hollywood agent Al Floss in the comedy The Famous Teddy Z. Also in the '90s, he provided the voice of Roger Myers Jr. on The Simpsons. The character is the chairman of the studio that produces The Itchy & Scratchy Show.

Alex also appeared in movies such as Smokin' Aces and provided the voice of grumpy ant Thorny in Disney-Pixar's A Bug's Life.

In recent years, he had starred on shows such as One Life to Live, The Division, comedian Marc Maron 's show Maron and Starz's Magic City, in which he played Arthur Evans. He also played Matt LeBlanc 's fictional father, Dick LeBlanc, on Showtime's Episodes.

Reality, schmeality: we’ll have what they’re having in Westworld—HBO’s hour-long loosely based adaptation of Michael Crichton’s 1973 film of the same name—even if that thing is total destruction. Jonathan Nolan’s televised reworking of the story looks to be even more sci-fi and western-y thriller than its predecessor (at least according to the HBO Television Critics Association panel we were at, where we saw a heck of a lot more footage than this—sorry/na na na na boo boo), but it most certainly does not differ in the terrific unsettling tone at the heart of the story.

In Japan, the character of Arsčne Lupin III is like Batman, Doctor Who, or James Bond—he’s been around forever and continues to be popular. After premiering in Manga series by Monkey Punch beginning in 1976, the Lupin III franchise spawned a second Manga, three anime series, an anime miniseries, seven feature films, 20 video games (!), and yearly Christmas specials. All that for a roguish, violent thief who womanized and exploited people. Everybody loves an anti-hero, right?

Well, the adventures of the dapper bandit and his equally Robin-Hoodish pals are set to continue this fall in a brand new series of Lupin the Third adventures. A trailer (above) has been released in Japan and from the animation style, you can see the creators are very much keeping the visual style the same or similar to the way it was in the 1970s, with visible pencil marks, even though, surely, the 2D art was all drawn digitally as most shows nowadays are. If you’re at all familiar with the shows or films, this trailer captures the spirit of everything that makes Lupin III such a fun character.

The whole gang is back: besides Lupin, we have his trusty right-hand man, Daisuke Jigen; the stoic samurai who owes Lupin his life, Goemon Ishikawa XIII; the classic femme fatale who is both ally and rival, Fujiko Mine; and Lupin’s doofus of an arch nemesis, Inspector Zenigata. However, added to this series is a new character—Lupin’s wife Rebecca Rossellini. That’s bound to change up Lupin’s devil-may-care lifestyle.

Several of the Lupin the 3rd series and films are available to watch on Hulu. One of those films was The Castle of Cagliostro directed by Hayao Miyazaki, which isn’t the most faithful version as Lupin is rather more nice than he is nasty, but still worth looking at.

The new series of Lupin III, which is said to blend both the humorous and dangerous aspects of the character, will begin airing in Italy on August 29th and Japan on October 1st.

Catherine E. Coulson, who played the Log Lady on David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” TV series and was set to return to the new Showtime version, died Monday morning of cancer. She was 71.

“We are all deeply sad, she meant so much to so many,” said her agent, Mary Dangerfield, who confirmed her death.

Coulson, who also worked as a camera assistant, reprised the Log Lady role in the feature “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” and more recently, she appeared on an episode of “Portlandia” and in the film “Redwood Highway.”

Lynch said in a statement, “Today I lost one of my dearest friends, Catherine Coulson. Catherine was solid gold. She was always there for her friends — she was filled with love for all people — for her family — for her work. She was a tireless worker. She had a great sense of humor — she loved to laugh and make people laugh.

In Japan, the character of Arsčne Lupin III is like Batman, Doctor Who, or James Bond—he’s been around forever and continues to be popular. After premiering in Manga series by Monkey Punch beginning in 1976, the Lupin III franchise spawned a second Manga, three anime series, an anime miniseries, seven feature films, 20 video games (!), and yearly Christmas specials. All that for a roguish, violent thief who womanized and exploited people. Everybody loves an anti-hero, right?

Well, the adventures of the dapper bandit and his equally Robin-Hoodish pals are set to continue this fall in a brand new series of Lupin the Third adventures. A trailer (above) has been released in Japan and from the animation style, you can see the creators are very much keeping the visual style the same or similar to the way it was in the 1970s, with visible pencil marks, even though, surely, the 2D art was all drawn digitally as most shows nowadays are. If you’re at all familiar with the shows or films, this trailer captures the spirit of everything that makes Lupin III such a fun character.

The whole gang is back: besides Lupin, we have his trusty right-hand man, Daisuke Jigen; the stoic samurai who owes Lupin his life, Goemon Ishikawa XIII; the classic femme fatale who is both ally and rival, Fujiko Mine; and Lupin’s doofus of an arch nemesis, Inspector Zenigata. However, added to this series is a new character—Lupin’s wife Rebecca Rossellini. That’s bound to change up Lupin’s devil-may-care lifestyle.

Several of the Lupin the 3rd series and films are available to watch on Hulu. One of those films was The Castle of Cagliostro directed by Hayao Miyazaki, which isn’t the most faithful version as Lupin is rather more nice than he is nasty, but still worth looking at.

The new series of Lupin III, which is said to blend both the humorous and dangerous aspects of the character, will begin airing in Italy on August 29th and Japan on October 1st.

Al Molinaro, best known for his long-running role as "Big Al" Delvecchio, has passed away.

The actor passed away on Friday, according to a report on TMZ. Molinaro was 96 years old a the time of his passing. According to his son, Molinaro was suffering from very bad gall stones, but he elected not to have surgery due to his age.

Molinaro's acting career started in the 1950s, but he really found his niche in 1969, when he came to Get Smart to play Agent 44. From then until the mid-1980s, Molinaro was a fixture on television, either in notable guest appearances on shows like The Love Boat and Punky Brewster, or in recurring roles on Green Acres, Happy Days (and its spinoffs) and The Family Man.

Molinaro also had an appearance in It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman, the memorably-awful TV adaptation of the Broadway musical by the same name.

Later in life, Molinaro retired from television and owned a string of diners bearing the "Big Al's" name with one of his Happy Days co-stars. He continued to do some commercial work until the early 2000s but his last truly memorable onscreen appearance was arguably as Big Al in the video for Weezer's "Buddy Holly," in which Molinaro introduced the band.

There are few TV shows that had as much impact on American pop culture as Happy Days. The sitcom ran for ten years on ABC, starting in 1974 and ending in 1984.

One of the most beloved characters on the show was Big Al, who was the chef at the Arnold's drive-in. He was known for his classic way of starting stories with, "Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep."

It’s been almost twenty years since Danny Boyle‘s Trainspotting brought us breakout performances of Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller and Kelly Macdonald. Not their first performances, but quite possibly some of the earliest that people remember. (We of course first remember seeing Miller in 1995’s Hackers.) Boyle’s been vocal about wanting to do a follow-up to the film for years and it’s now been confirmed that his sequel to the 1996 film will feature the original cast.

Based on the 1993 novel of the same name, Trainspotting followed a group of heroin addicts in late ’80s Scotland through their day-to-day lives. A grim look at addiction shown through the direction of Boyle was not just a beautiful film but solidified him as a director and became the example most of his later films have been measured against. There have been talks about a sequel for years that would follow the Irvine Welsh book’s sequel, Porno, (obviously this won’t be the name of the movie) which takes place about 9 years after the events of the first book. With 20 years gone by and everyone involved having aged, it’s safe to say the sequel will pick up a little later than the events of book.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, a deal has been struck that includes the original cast including Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Ewen Bremner, and Robert Carlyle as well as the first film’s screenwriter John Hodge. If the result of getting the whole team back together results in anything near the original, we’ll be overjoyed.

It’ll be interesting to see how the sequel is handled in terms of perspective. The Trainspotting novel had shifting narratives between characters (as does Porno) while the majority of the film is shown primarily through the perspective of McGregor’s Mark Renton. Will we get to see the world through the eyes of Sick Boy, Spud, and Begbie this time, or will it all be secondhand through Renton once more? We can’t wait to find out!

This Mystery Science Theater 3000 Kickstarter campaign has become an embarrassment of riches since it hit the halfway mark. With less than 36 hours to go to reach the $5.5 million needed to make a full season of 12 new episodes, creator Joel Hodgson is pulling out all the stops in terms of stretch goals and announcements to ensure a full season is funded. This week, he’s already announced guest writers like Dan Harmon, Justin Roiland, and Ernie Cline, and now he’s back to announce the line-up of celebrities who’d want to cameo if/when it comes back (it’s definitely happening, just not sure how many eps yet).

Hodgson was quick to point out in his latest Kickstarter update that all of these celebrity cameos are dependent on scheduling and nothing is set in stone, but all have expressed interest in appearing in some fashion on the new show, likely in host segment sketches I’d imagine.

Who are we talking about? Oh, only people with names like Joel McHale, Jack Black, Bill Hader, Jerry Seinfeld, Neil Patrick Harris, and none other than Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill.

If even one of these huge stars appeared on the show, that’d be a major coup, but if all of them did? Holy cow. Pretty stellar for a show that started with Minneapolis comedians sitting in a room next to robot puppets. Adam Savage, by the way, is also joining the show to do some practical effects.

Joel finishes his update by musing how great it would be if new mad scientist Felicia Day and guest star NPH could sing a duet written by celebrity guest writer Robert Lopez. We agree, Mr. Hodgson. We agree.

The MST3K Kickstarter campaign will end Friday night and, as of this writing, has raised $4.4 million, with a further $375,000 raised outside of Kickstarter. If you’d like to help make this amazing comedic prospect happen, you can visit their page.

Deadline reports, Katherin Waterston has landed a starring role in Ridley Scott's Alien: Covenant, the first of three sequels to 2012's Prometheus.

The only detail that they on Waterston's role, is that her character's name is 'Daniels.'

The 35-year-old American actress has seen her star rise over the past several years as she had a prominent supporting role in Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice and is playing Porpentina "Tina" Goldstein in the Harry Potter prequel, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Synopsis: Ridley Scott returns to the universe he created in Alien with Alien: Covenant, the second chapter in a prequel trilogy that began with Prometheus -- and connects directly to Scott's 1979 seminal work of science fiction. Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world -- whose sole inhabitant is the "synthetic" David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.

At one of John Boyega's many surprise appearances at screenings of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, this time in Brixton, UK, he confirmed the time table everyone's been talking about for the next chapter of the series. Boyega said that he's excited to start filming Episode VIII "in a few weeks in London" when he addressed a crowd there.

"It's an alright film, innit?" Boyega said to the applauding full house, according to a report by Sky. "I have been doing some pop-ups at several different cinemas all over London, and I definitely had to come to Brixton since I'm from down the road in Peckham.

"So I just wanted to say a thank you to everyone for coming out and supporting this movie. The movie is yours now and I really hope you enjoyed it and we are so happy to be starting on Episode VIII in a few weeks in London. It is going to be fun," the actor said.

This narrows the timeline to late January, while Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy has been saying "next month" or "January" while on the press tour for The Force Awakens. Good to know the cast will get at least a couple of weeks off for the holiday before they jump back into the shoes of Jedi, pilots, and stormtroopers from a galaxy far, far away.

Star Wars: Episode VIII, directed by Rian Johnson, hits theaters May 26, 2017. Yes, that's a sentence we'll have to now get used to writing after months of covering The Force Awakens release.

Angus Scrimm, who is best known for having played the Tall Man in the Phantasm horror movies, died earlier tonight. Scrimm was 89 years old at the time of his death.

The news of Scrimm’s passing was first shared by Phantasm director Don Coscarelli on Twitter. Coscarelli wrote, “Phantasm’s Angus Scrimm passed away peacefully tonight surrounded by his friends and loved ones. Angus’s performance as the Tall Man is a towering achievement in horror film history. He was the last of the classic horror movie stars. Angus was a terrific actor and an even better friend. He will be missed. #heartbroken.”

On IMDB, Scrimm has over 50 acting credits to his name, having played a number of character pieces in a variety of films and TV shows. In addition to the Phantasm franchise, Scrimm was also well-known for playing Calvin McCullough on the Alias television series.

BBC America has announced that the new BBC Three series Class, a Doctor Who spinoff series aimed at young adults, will be making its way stateside in 2016. The series, which boasts the prolific Stephen Moffat as an executive producer, takes place at the Coal Hill Secondary School, which most recently served as the former workplace of companion Clara Oswald. Series writer Patrick Ness, who has written a several bestselling books and several screenplays, expressed his excitement for the series.

David Bowie‘s presence is going to be felt in a big way this fall on Fox.

The network’s new drama Lucifer is based on the character created by Neil Gaiman in the DC/Vertigo comic series The Sandman, and developed more later by writer Mike Carey in his long-running spinoff series named after the character. But what isn’t widely known is the fact that the character of Lucifer (played by Tom Ellis in the new series) is actually based on the real-life public persona of Bowie, who passed away earlier this week.

“David Bowie was what the original character was based on, the sketches and stuff that was in the graphic novel,” Ellis said at the 2016 TCA Winter Press Tour. “What we did do is take some of Bowie’s music and infused it into the pilot. Lucifer is a massive David Bowie fan. Music is a massive part of the show. It was a big thing in the pilot script and it’s something we’re trying to continue for the series. Lucifer’s taste in music is a big thing. He’s a big appreciator of music.”

But as executive producer Jonathan Littman explained, they didn’t want to straight-up mimic the late, great icon.

“Because of the way he was so explicitly drawn, unless we could get David Bowie, it’s probably better not to try and mimic David Bowie,” Littman said. “We felt like taking this fresh casting chance.”

Executive producer Joe Henderson added, “We found a different way to encapsulate that effortless cool that was David Bowie.”

Something that all the showrunners were excited about is how Lucifer is a procedural, but not in the way that people might be used to on a Fox show. Yes, Lucifer works with LAPD Detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German) on her cases, but for a unique purpose.

“Lucifer is fascinated by the crimes, why people choose to do evil and deception,” executive producer Len Wiseman said. “He loves it and gets off on it. It’s a study for him where he wants to see why humans are doing what they’re doing. If they get put in prison, he doesn’t care. He just wants to see them get punished.”

And don’t expect Lucifer to be the pure embodiment of evil. The show is going to explore who he really is deep down, not just what his job used to be, as the leader of Hell.

“We take our cues from the comic book character,” Henderson said. “The devil is the fallen son of God. He’s not evil. He’s just the rebellious son. He’s mischievous, he’s playful, but he’s also honest and he embraces his desires. Lucifer is all about exploring humanity and exploring desires. There’s no pretense. There’s nothing evil about him. Sometimes, the truth really shall set you free.”

Ellis explained that the main question of the show is whether Lucifer is the devil because he’s intrinsically evil or because God decided he was.

“He just wants to be loved at the end of the day,” executive producer Ildy Modrovich said. “He’s the eternal teenager.”